On International Women’s Day, 8 March 2017, Laura Paterson, Office Principal UK Office and Jackie Kinsey, Chief Leadership Officer joined us on the Wellcome Genome Campus from ThoughtWorks to ask: where are the women in tech?
Who is ThoughtWorks?
ThoughtWorks is a socially responsible software development consultancy, founded 22 years ago. It currently employs around 30% graduates out of 4,500 employees globally. They have 40 offices in 14 countries, including Australia, Germany, Italy, UK and US and hire around 360 graduates per year. The new hires all go on a 5 week induction programme (“ThoughtWorks University”) in India when they join the company. This enables them to build strong connections and collaborations. The company recruits about 6 times per year globally, at times that are region-dependent.
In 2016, ThoughtWorks was the winner of the Anita Borg Institute’s Top Companies for Women Technologists, based on measurements relating to recruitment, retention and advancement. The Anita Borg Institute in North America is a national benchmarking programme that evaluates 60 companies with more than 1.4 million employees. ThoughtWorks wants to create a inclusive environment, which means looking at the whole recruitment pipeline. Retention is one the key challenges. They have built particularly strong female networks within the company and find that role models are critical for creating an environment that people want to work in and stay in.
The ThoughtWorks plan
ThoughtWorks’ stated intention (which is not a quota) is to have a 50:50 ratio of male / female graduate employees, which they have now achieved. Part of their strategy is to invite communities into their office. The UK office has worked with Code First: Girls, Black Girls Code, Mums in Technology and Women Hack for Non-Profit. Some events are external-facing, some are targeted at future hires. They also have a programme of key speakers and they often receive applications off the back of these. They work with the Makers Academy graduate programme to recruit talent.
To achieve a 50:50 graduate ratio, ThoughtWorks have had to challenge at least one key assumption – that all developers must have a computer science degree. Of the 70,000 subscribers to Stack Overflow, an online programmers’ community, 60% have a non- computer science background (but are also overwhelmingly male). ThoughtWorks are not looking for pre-existing knowledge, but for aptitude, attitude and integrity. The ThoughtWorks strategy is to change the approach to hiring graduates by reaching out to graduates in maths, philosophy, STEM and linguistics. They also seek to recruit from groups without degrees, such as through CodeFirst:Girls. One approach has been to intervene earlier in girls’ career decisions, for example at the point where they decide on their UK GCSE courses (age 14). ThoughtWorks have also worked with colleges and schools to organise coaching and mentoring relationships.
What are the issues for recruitment?
At the Sex in Science: Women in IT panel discussion on 4 October 2016 at the Wellcome Genome Campus, a number of issues were identified:
- The numbers applying for tech posts at EBI and Sanger are low
- Lack of a clear career path for tech roles may be a factor
- Male dominated environments can discourage women from applying
- Women report being ‘put off’ from applying for tech roles because they do not meet all the criteria specified in the ad
- Gendered language in adverts can discourage female applicants
- Unconscious bias
- Poor public perception of ‘jobs in IT’ – computational roles in sciences can be seen as stepping off the traditional scientific research path
“I’d rather be a binman”
One of the key issues for ThoughtWorks is an out-of-date perception of what working in tech really means. One participant in the Little Miss Geek initiative said, “I’d rather be a binman than work in tech!” The perception that working in tech involves sitting in a cellar, eating pizza and neglecting your personal hygiene is remarkably persistent.
ThoughtWorks is keen to work with young people to stress the collaborative, hypothesis-driven nature of software development today, to move away from the idea of lone wolf coders. This includes making role models as visible as possible – when you apply for a job at ThoughtWorks, you will be interviewed by a women and you will see plenty of women in the office. Their aim is for all female staff to participate in their Global Leadership Development programme while they are with the company. They have launched a “Being Brave” training programme. This is open to everyone, but focuses on aspects of working life that women typically find more challenging, such as “imposter syndrome” and confidence building.
Laura and Jackie summed up the lessons that ThoughtWorks have learnt:
- Diversity and inclusivity is everyone’s responsibility
- Challenge perceptions
- Unconscious bias should be addressed by raising awareness and training
- Mind your language – keep gendered language out of job ads
- Commit to a truly inclusive work environment
- Value different leadership models and styles
- Break out of traditional masculine and feminine roles
Final thoughts from ThoughtWorks
Ultimately, to increase the number of women tech, ThoughtWorks recommends taking a hard look at the hiring pipeline as a whole. Increased female staff ratios can be achieved through intentional succession planning – you don’t always have to recruit talent, you can develop your own. Mentoring is also an important way to develop this talent in-house. Encouraging more women into tech should not be seen as a battle but as a collaboration, so everyone needs to be involved. Similarly, culture change needs to be both top down and bottom up. ThoughtWorks is a great example of how effective this approach can be in creating a genuinely inclusive tech company.
KatieGee 